venkatna's (Venkat Narayanan's) WebLog : General

List of all Microsoft Team Blogs

venkatna — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:36:34 GMT

Brandon LeBlanc has gone to some trouble to get a list of all Microsoft Team Blogs in one location. This is a very useful list for any Microsoft watcher.

- Venkat

Performance of Web sites

venkatna — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 07:14:11 GMT

Yahoo Developer Network has a good post that details a number of things you can and should do to improve performance of your websites. Most of the recommendations are common sense, but together they pack a powerful punch. I have personally seen the bumps you get in performance whenever you implement one of these changes. The most bang for your buck is in minimizing the number of get requests. However, the one thing that i am iffy about is GZip compression, especially for JS. Compressing HTML and CSS usually result in better performance with no issues, but certain browsers seem to have issues with compressed JS. This has led to far too many problems in the sites i have worked on. However, with more people moving to newer browsers, it probably makes sense to compress JS files now. This also depends on the kind of traffic you get.

Crossroads Guitar Festival - on MSN

venkatna — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 07:45:14 GMT

People that know me, know i am a huge Blues fan. I am particularly fond of the guitar. My favorite artist is Eric Clapton. So when I see a concert that features Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Robert Randolph and Jimmie Vaughan, I usually want to visit. Unfortunately, this happens to be tomorrow, July 28, 2007, in Chicago.

I don't know how many of you have heard of the Crossroads Guitar Festival. The previous one was in Dallas (I believe in 2004). However, the concert sold out in 10 minutes, so I probably would not have found tickets anyway.

However, and here is the good news (that I kinda gave away in the title :) ) is that MSN has got my back. They are broadcasting this concert live. After the successful Live Earth concert, I am sure they will do a good job this time as well.

Cannot wait to watch this. I also hope they have recorded versions.

- Venkat